Yao is included on the ballot despite being been injured all year. He and other undeserving players are available to garner undeserving postseason award attention. Along with Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Durant are Erick Dampier, Dorell Wright and DJ Mbenga. Which is not to say that these aren’t fine players in their own right (excluding Dampier, of course), but they obviously don’t deserve to be mentioned as Most Valuable Anything. And therein lies the problem.

Of course, the NBA isn’t crazy. This move continues their trend of finding innovative ways to include their fanbase in the happenings of the league. But once you take a look at the actual process, it’s all smoke and mirrors. If you vote for your favorite player, you won’t be picking the Most Valuable Player any more than Mike Brown picks the Cavaliers crunch time out of bounds plays. The player deemed by the fans as most valuable will receive one overall vote. The other 124 votes will be cast by writers and broadcasters, as always. The league trusts us with All-Star starters and Slam Dunk winners, but not with naming the player who will be able to add some meaningful hardware to his trophy collection.

At first I thought the NBA was cruel for releasing such power to the fans without defining the parameters of what it means to be the league’s Most Valuable. Are they the best overall player? The most important to a single team? The best player on the best team? No one knows, which is why there is often an argument come year’s end about who should have won. But since the fan vote essentially means nothing, I won’t stress out over it. I’ll just watch to see which players’ names appear more often than they should. Because honestly, there are three players who should even be mentioned in this conversation and I brought them up a couple of paragraphs ago.

So decide who you’re going to vote for, who should be second and third, and pick two random players for the fourth and fifth spots. Why? Because you can. Because it won’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Because a league sponsor might give you a car. Because we know that the fans are all going to vote for Kobe and LeBron anyway. And because we know even a billion Chinese votes can’t make Yao win.